Inside Potter's exit: How chaos behind the scenes led to his downfall?

It's over, again, for Graham Potter. Seven months at Chelsea, eight months at West Ham. This was not how his career was meant to play out.

This was not the plan for the manager Pep Guardiola once hailed as the finest coach England had to offer.

Potter should be at the top of his game now. In another life, he would be England manager. He certainly was not supposed to have been chewed up and spat out by one giant of English football and then ground down and crushed by another.

He wasn't expected to spend the final days of his West Ham reign having his face superimposed on to Donald Trump and King Charles as a viral object of ridicule.

And so the 50-year-old's reign at the London Stadium was finally brought to an end on Saturday, a little over 48 hours away from the Hammers' trip to Everton, with his side's most recent loss, 2-1 to Crystal Palace, leaving them 19th in the table.

Potter's record at West Ham read 25 games, six wins, five draws and 14 losses – a win rate of a measly 24 per cent. Whatever the caveats, that's simply not good enough.

He took nearly two years out after his painful Chelsea sacking to return to the dugout. How long will he need this time after his comeback went just as badly? Where does he go next? Who will want him?

Hindsight forges prophets, of course, but Potter will be left wondering why on earth, of all the jobs, he took this one.

It was a risk to join Chelsea three years ago, leaving behind a stable job at Brighton where he flourished but one he had to take. It was his chance at the big time.

A manager who started his coaching career at Leeds Carnegie in the Northern Counties East League and Ostersund in the fourth tier of Swedish football. These opportunities don't come up very often. You wonder if they ever will again.

Potter looked at how Eddie Howe and Unai Emery bounced back from their own bruising experiences at Bournemouth and Arsenal and believed he too could do that. Then he chose West Ham.

Potter turned down numerous opportunities to return to the dugout in his 20 months out of the game. He said no to Leicester, he said no to Ajax, he apparently said no to AC Milan. He was in the mix to replace Gareth Southgate as before the FA turned to Thomas Tuchel.

He used that time away to refresh, recharge and – in Potter's own words – 'grieve'. He spoke to the British troops in the Falklands. He met with England rugby head coach Steve Borthwick to discuss coaching and leadership. He started Spanish lessons.

And then he took a job at the most madcap club in the Premier League.

It was as though having so many players at Chelsea that some had to sit on the floor during team meetings and get changed in the corridor was not punishment enough for a manager who had thrived at Brighton where the plan was clear, the decisions sane and the expectations reasonable.

Potter spoke of the need for 'alignment' at his West Ham unveiling despite agreeing to work under one of the most meddlesome and unpopular owners in the business.

He took over an ageing, unbalanced squad and wanted to sign younger players this summer that he could improve and sell on, so chairman David Sullivan snapped up 33-year-old injury-prone striker Callum Wilson on a free.

When Potter got his way and signed goalkeeper Mads Hermansen, as soon as the Dane had two poor games, Sullivan tried to sign another.

Sullivan hammered Potter for his team selection at Old Trafford last season, when he left Niclas Fullkrug and Lucas Paqueta on the bench, only for West Ham to come away with a 2-0 win.

When things began to go wrong at the start of this season, the Hammers co-owner was quick behind the scenes to lay the blame at Potter's door instead of the decisions that have brought the club to the point where its supporters are protesting the board and boycotting matches.

Potter didn't have the force of personality to unite a passionate fanbase nor the ability to get results with the players at his disposal but he also did not sign the defenders who can't defend, the midfielders who can't run and the strikers who can't stay fit.

It wasn't his decision to turn centre back Jean Clair-Todibo's loan move into an automatic permanent one for nearly £33million in the summer, despite the player having been signed for a manager - Julen Lopetegui - by a technical director - Tim Steidten - both of whom were no longer at the club.

He landed his top midfield target in Mateus Fernandes and was sacked soon after, though his insistence at playing James Ward-Prowse at every opportunity will forever remain a mystery. A Premier League team should not be conceding seven goals from corners in five matches.

Potter should have known it would end this way. Messy and public. Because that is how he got the job in the first place.

His predecessor Lopetegui was busy taking training while rumours spread that the Spaniard was going to be sacked. Names of potential replacements somehow found their way into the public domain. Edin Terzic, Sergio Conceicao, Paulo Fonseca... Graham Potter.

No one should be surprised it happened again. At the same time sources close to Potter were insisting to Daily Mail Sport that it was 'business as usual', others were whispering that Slaven Bilic was being considered as a replacement.

As senior club sources insisted Potter had their '100 per cent backing', they were also holding talks with Nuno Espirito Santo. This is, to borrow a phrase, the West Ham way.

It was only Sullivan's lack of certainty over his next move, concerns over Nuno's financial demands, and other members of the board not being enamoured with the alternatives, that saw Potter last this long. Now it appears those concerns have been ironed out, with Nuno set to take over imminently. Sullivan had only wanted to give Potter a short-term deal in the first place before agreeing to a two-and-a-half-year contract.

Potter called a meeting this week for all first-team staff to issue a rallying cry for everyone to stick together. Daily Mail Sport understands many of the senior players in the West Ham squad still backed Potter until the end.

What's remarkable is quite how quickly it all unravelled. When Daily Mail Sport spoke to numerous West Ham insiders in the first few weeks of Potter's reign, they all talked about how his methods, both on the training ground and around their base at Rush Green, had made the club feel united again.

'It feels like the club is pulling in the same direction,' said one well-placed source at the time. 'It's a better place for it,' said another.

The players spoke of an influx of 'new ideas' with sessions more varied and tactical than Lopetegui's. Potter's ability to communicate in simple, clear messages was seen as a breath of fresh air.

He frequently held one-to-one conversations with his players. He did the same at Chelsea, though there was a feeling he was trying to be too friendly with his squad when he needed them to fear him.

He tried to keep everyone happy, when he should have taken a leaf out of Enzo Maresca's book. He didn't care who you were, or how much the club paid to sign you, if he didn't fancy you, you were part of the bomb squad.

Potter was never that ruthless. His team selections were scrutinised inside and outside, with it understood the odd senior player wondered whether he was out of his depth. Many of his players were calling him 'Harry' and 'Hogwarts' around Cobham.

And yet for all that early positivity at West Ham, the sheer weight of poor results and lack of improvement was inescapable. Potter was fortunate last season that the promoted teams were so bad that the team's survival was never in doubt. West Ham have not had that luxury this time around.

You could see how much of a toll it was taking on him by the end. Gone was the cheerful smile of a guy declaring that it was like 'Christmas for adults' at his unveiling, replaced by a defensive man prickling at even the most sympathetic of questions.

Do you, during difficult moments, reflect on your experience and achievements in the game to help you through, he was asked by a journalist a few games into the season. He responded with a speech about the negative world we live in, how he had no doubts about his ability whatsoever, thank you very much, and that he couldn't care less what the media thought.

Daily Mail Sport felt a bit of it towards the end of last season when we asked after a late defeat to his former club Brighton what Potter made of the fans chanting in support of striker Fullkrug, who had accused West Ham of having a 'mindset problem' in a bombshell television interview, that 'the German's right, we're f***ing s***e'.

'They're entitled to sing what they want,' he replied with a stare. 'That's it.' When we asked if Fullkrug has been dropped for the game because of his outburst, Potter snapped back. 'No.'

Among the supporters, however, any sense of fury had long since passed. At Chelsea, Potter received death threats when things went badly.

Potter faced chants of 'You don't know what you're doing' and 'you're getting sacked in the morning' during West Ham's defeat to Crystal Palace but instead of raging about the side's poor form and a demand for change, the fans spent most of their time afterwards superimposing pictures of Potter's face on to various celebrities.

Donald Trump, the Chuckle Brothers, singer Sabrina Carpenter, American actress Sydney Sweeney, King Charles. Hundreds of them. His face on to James Maddison's kids, on to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, on to Ruben Amorim.

It's bad when the fans hate you, it's worse when they turn you into a meme. By then you've become a laughing stock.

And how far his own stock has fallen. It will take a long time for the top jobs to come Potter's way again, if they ever do. He was linked to the United job after Erik ten Hag. It is unlikely he'll be offered the same courtesy when Amorim gets the chop.

Wherever he ends up, however long it takes him, it needs to be at a club where everyone is pulling in the same direction. Chaos, it's clear, doesn't suit him.

Whoever replaces Potter at West Ham will face exactly the same challenges. Potter failed. Lopetegui failed. Even David Moyes, for all his triumphs and European trophies, failed at the end, winning only won four of his final 19 league games.

Potter was not the problem at West Ham. They run much deeper than him. He just certainly wasn't the solution either.